Trojan Odyssey

"I'm with Dirk," Giordino said loyally. "I say stick our bow in the sucker."

A smile began to creep across Gu

One quick glance at the radar screen and Pitt dashed to his cabin to retrieve his nightscope. He returned to the open deck in less than a minute and motioned for Giordino to follow him up a ladder to the roof of the pilothouse. Without the slightest hesitation, Giordino climbed after him. They lay flat on the roof, elbows braced to steady the nightscope they passed back and forth. Oddly, they did not stare directly at the luminescent phantom, but eyed the darkness ahead and astern of it.

Wondering if the two NUMA men were losing touch with all reality, Dodge and Renee instinctively ducked down on the deck behind the pilothouse. Above them, Pitt and Giordino ignored the approaching disaster.

"I've got mine," declare Giordino. "Looks like a small barge to the west about three hundred yards."

"I have my target too," Pitt followed. "A yacht, a big one well over a hundred feet in length, the same distance to the east."

A hundred yards, fifty, on a collision course with the unknown. Then Poco Bonito lunged into and through the opaque shape of the ancient barque. For an instant the yellow glow burst like orange lasers at a rock concert and shrouded the little research boat. Renee and Dodge could see the pirates moving above them on the main deck, firing their guns with a vengeance. Oddly, none of them took the slightest notice of the vessel plunging through their ship.

Then Poco Bonito was speeding alone over a velvet black sea. In her wake, the yellow glow abruptly blinked out and was gone, and the sounds of the guns melted into the night. It was as if the ghostly vision had never been.

"Stay on the throttles," Pitt advised Gu

"Were we hallucinating?" Renee muttered, her face white as a paper towel. "Or did we really run through a ghost ship?"

Pitt put his arm around her. "What you saw, dear heart, was a four-dimensional image — height, depth, width and motion — all recorded and projected in a hologram."

Renee still seemed dazed as she stared into the night. "It looked so real, so convincing."

"About twice as real as its phony captain with his Treasure Island Long John Silver peg leg, Peter Pan hook and Horatio Nelson eye patch. And then there was the flag. Blood was dripping in all the wrong places."

"But why?" asked Renee to no one in particular. "Why such a production in the middle of the sea?"

Pitt's eyes were staring through the pilothouse doorway at the radar screen. "What we have here is a case of contemporary piracy."

"But who projected the holographic image?"

"I'm in the dark too," added Dodge. "I saw no other vessels."

"Your eyes and mind were focused on the apparition," said Giordino. "Dirk and I observed a large yacht to our port and a barge to the starboard, both three hundred yards away. Neither showing any lights."

A light went on in Renee's mind. "They projected the beam for the hologram?"

Pitt nodded. "They cast the illusion of a phantom ship and crew doomed to sail the sea forever. But their projection was one huge cliché. They must have created Hunt's ship and crew after watching too many old Errol Fly

"Judging from the radar, the yacht is giving chase," Giordino alerted them.

Standing at the helm, Gu

Giordino threw a wet blanket over the relief and joy. "We'd better pray that they don't carry mortars or rockets."

"They'd have opened up on us by now—" Gu

Pitt looked at Giordino. "I wish you hadn't given them ideas."

Gu

"Douse our ru

His reply was instant darkness, as the little NUMA director flicked off the main lighting switch. The swells had risen to three feet and Poco Bonito's beamy hull was now splashing through the crests at almost forty-five knots.

"How are we fixed for weapons?" Giordino asked Gu

"Two M4 carbines with attached forty-millimeter grenade launchers."

"Nothing heavier?"

"Easily hidden small arms is all the admiral would allow on board in case we were stopped and searched by a Nicaraguan patrol boat."

"Do we look like drug smugglers?" demanded Renee.

Dodge stared at her with a crooked smile. "What do drug smugglers look like?"

Pitt said, "I've got my old Colt forty-five. How about you, Al?"

"A fifty-caliber Desert Eagle automatic."

"We may not be able to sink them," said Pitt. "But at least we can repel boarders."

"If they don't blast us to smithereens first," grunted Giordino, as another missile landed in Poco Bonito's wake no more than fifty feet astern.

"So long as their rockets aren't equipped with homing devices, they can't hit what they can't see."

Automatic weapons fire began to wink in the darkness behind them, as the modern pirates aimed by radar in their general direction. Tracers danced over the surface of the sea fifty yards to starboard in a spraying pattern. Gu

Two more rockets arced through the night. The pirates played the odds and fired them almost in parallel at the blip on their radar. They had the right idea, but they fired when Gu

Then the firing stopped and it seemed as though a mantle of stillness had been drawn over the boat. Only the beat of the mighty engines straining in their mounts, the growl of the exhaust and the water sloshing past the bow broke the silence.

"Have they given up?" Renee murmured hopefully.

Staring at the radar, Gu

"But who are they?"

"Local pirates don't use holograms or fire missiles from yachts," Giordino said flatly.